


Calm, Heralding Chaos

by Magichorse



Series: Dark Universe [2]
Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Blood, F/F, Harrow the Ninth Spoilers (Locked Tomb Trilogy), Ianthe Tridentarius is Her Own Warning, Lesbian Sex, POV Ianthe, Porn With Plot, referenced Harrowhark/Gideon, references to canon instances of self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:53:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26472169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magichorse/pseuds/Magichorse
Summary: "You had a prey animal’s sense of the rough weave of time and circumstance tangling us inexorably together. "Ianthe knows she and Harrowhark are meant to be together, no matter how Harrow struggles against wanting her.
Relationships: Harrowhark Nonagesimus/Ianthe Tridentarius
Series: Dark Universe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1924534
Comments: 29
Kudos: 104





	Calm, Heralding Chaos

**Author's Note:**

> This scene takes place after Harrow's conversation with God about opening the Locked Tomb. It borrows the 'first person direct address' point of view for Ianthe instead of Gideon. This turned out to be difficult, because do we really know what Ianthe is thinking? No. But I tried.

In so many ways I was waiting for you. Not pining, don’t flatter yourself. More like keeping an eye to the horizon for the hint of a forecasted storm—a streak of lightning through cosmic dust, a drop in atmospheric pressure, a magnetic buzz in the radio wires—subtle, but telling. Calm, heralding chaos. I knew you would return—the one who sought me on the _Erebos,_ darkening my doorway like a revenant, a supernova of grief expanding in your chest. You/her, the Reverend Daughter turned avatar of rage. The one who set your hands to self-destruction when you might just as easily have made the universe burn instead for what it had done to you. That you. I was waiting for _that_ you. 

I saw her sometimes in your flashes of anger or grief. I admit I took pleasure in provoking them, both because it was easy, and because I wanted her—you—back. 

Meanwhile, you had left me with some snarling, struggling version of yourself which was only ever halfway sane on a good day. I often caught you speaking to empty rooms, your eyes tracking shapes I could not see. 

As the days counted down to the arrival of the Beast, you grew worse. You would stare almost longingly into dark corners, or down empty hallways, like you were waiting for someone, too. You seemed bereft, more wrapped up in your private grief than ever. I almost pitied you, but then I remembered that if you felt like something vital to your being had been carved away, you had quite literally done it to yourself. Besides, I had been without my sister for months by then, and I didn’t have a lot of pity to spare on someone who wasn’t me, truth be told. Sorry about that.

On this particular day, I went to see you on some errand I cannot now recall. Perhaps I was just in the mood for a conversation with someone under 10,000 years old. Opportunities for social enrichment around here are sorely lacking. I walked past the familiar, obsessive sprawl of bone wards spiraling through the corridors outside your quarters and let myself into your room. I always enjoyed the feel of the lethal energies seething in the gritty ash, forced into abeyance at my blood signature. You had never once acknowledged this modification to your defenses, and I, taking the hint, never brought it up.

I found you sitting on your bed, fingertips dirty with your own blood as you bent over some nasty business to do with your legs. From the door I could see you were gripping a small pair of bone tweezers, and your knees sparkled with broken glass and wet blood. You were shivering as you worked, though it was not cold. Hands unsteady, you would occasionally twitch and stab yourself with the needle points of your instrument accidentally, making the work slow as well as that much more painful. I know I sighed at this pathetic display of your Lyctoral shortcomings, which, again, you had only yourself to blame for, if only you knew. 

You felt my presence long before I appeared in the doorway, and must have heard the ancient gears of the door hiss, but you didn’t turn from your work to acknowledge my arrival. Curious, I crossed the distance to your bedside, where you again ignored me. Taking this for invitation, I gathered my skirts and settled to my knees to better observe the damage. Self-inflicted, it seemed. Why, I wouldn’t presume to know. 

You had discarded your ruined trousers and sat with your robes gathered up on your lap, leaving your thin, tawny legs bare. I hardly reacted to this show of skin. You and I were well past modesty by now. I had dressed in front of you many mornings since you’d developed a habit of passing out in my bed; for your part, you thought nothing of discarding your frequently-destroyed clothing on my floor and commandeering mine. You didn’t flinch at my left hand placed on your inner thigh as I rotated your leg to a better viewing angle, but your twitching hands stilled. I flicked the tweezers from your motionless fingers and batted the hands away. You let me, and I remember you made no comment, no sound, but I could feel your stare as if it were an awl to my skull. 

I slid the gilded phalanges of my right hand gently up your shin to the edge of the damage and sensed into the swath of shredded flesh. Predictably, you’d already worked the glass shards out of your bones, but equally predictable, you were having trouble with the meat. I released a questing stream of thalergy deep into the flesh, bubbling each embedded shard within a capsule of fat, and drew these to the surface where they burst in a clear sluice of serosanguinous fluid and glass on contact with the air. I left you to patch up your own skin to your liking, and set to fixing the other knee.

When my charity work was complete I began to sit back on my heels, but before I could move, your palm struck the back of my human hand, pinning it where it splayed against your thigh. I glanced up to look you in the eye at last, and found you leaned forward, your face brought low to mine, tilted just so to bring our lips close, but not quite. I smiled, just a little, as I realized your predicament. I loved that my presence could affect you this way. How you _hated_ wanting me. 

I could feel the quiver of muscle in your throat and hear the stutter of your breath as you hesitated, caught between the desire to close the gap and the survival instinct to flee. You had a prey animal’s sense of the rough weave of time and circumstance tangling us inexorably together. Every time you felt its touch you thrashed against the bonds, but it was made like a snare and tightened all the more. And I, I stood still, moving neither closer nor away, but fixed in space, ever a temptation, a well of gravity into which you would inevitably fall--yet another thing you did to yourself when you destroyed the memory of your beloved cavalier.

What had she been to you? I had always wondered. You loved her, that I knew. You loved her so desperately that you would rather cut her from your living brain than face an eternity being consumed by her loss. I could see how it must have happened. She had been a striking specimen. Those golden eyes, that crooked grin, absolute poetry with a sword, just the type that teenage hearts broke for every day. You were only human, then, and possessed after all of a teenage human heart underneath your scowl and paint and Ninth House gravitas. You poor little chump.

When did you know you were in love with her, Harrow? At what moment did it dawn on you like a terrible sunrise? Had you been each other’s firsts? Did she keep you warm back in the icy depths of Drearburh? I would never know, and, now, you would never remember. 

She never could have satisfied you, though, Harrow. She was a simple creature. You were to her like a pearl before a swine, precious beyond her comprehension. Be thankful this way opened you to me, and that when you are ready to ascend to my side, the galaxy will fall at our feet.

“It need not be now,” I said to you idly, in answer to a question you had not asked. I brought the free tip of one glimmering distal up to play along your bottom lip. “But it will happen someday. I think you’ll even find it could be nice. If only you live.”

“I have never died,” you said quietly, fiercely.

“Well, then,” I said, flashing my teeth and sliding my finger from your lips, “We have a myriad to come together, you and I, and the choice of when it starts will always be yours.”

You chose now.

Your lips captured mine in a way that was not tender. I was thankful for this. I would not have understood tenderness from you, nor would I have wanted it. Now was not a tender time. The apocalypse was roaring toward us like a river burst from its banks. I wanted your heat, I wanted your flame, I wanted to touch whatever it was that I had seen burning in you those long months ago—the passion, the brilliance—like the core of a living star. Perhaps I wanted it to burn me, too. 

You paused to relinquish your vice grip of my hand, abandoning it to lever yourself down off the bed and into my lap, freshly-reskinned knees touching down on the floor to either side of my hips. I slid my hands along the tops of your bare thighs and then beneath you, supporting you and pulling you spread-legged against me. I remember my dress was thin, and you had only your underclothes to cover you, and I could feel the heat between your legs where you pressed against my abdomen. I abandoned your lips to kiss your neck so I could bury my senses beneath your skin, listening to the blood rushing hot through your veins and feeling the vital beat of your heart thrum in my skull. You made a small cry both in ecstasy and revulsion as you felt the caress of my power within your body. To let another Lyctor touch you was always dangerous. That’s what makes it hot, my dear.

You twisted one hand into my hair and pulled my mouth back to yours for an open-mouthed kiss. With your spare hand, your delicate fingers scrambled at the lacings of my dress. You were not good at this part. Used to Ninth House robes, were you? I smiled against your mouth, gave your bottom lip a bite, and pushed you firmly off of me to do it myself. I looked pointedly at your robe while I undid my dress. “Off, Nonagesimus,” I said. You hastily slid the robe from your shoulders, but left your underclothes. That wouldn’t do. “All of it,” I said, and did not hide my smile at your answering scowl which did not entirely cover your blush. 

When you climbed back into my lap, naked and beautiful, I pressed my lips just above your ear to sense the wound hidden beneath skull and meninges, just to marvel again at what you had done. You flinched at the sensation, and I abandoned it to plant a quick apologetic kiss into your shoulder before biting down on the flesh. You liked teeth last time. As I had hoped, you arched at the touch of enamel to flesh, discomfort forgotten. You threaded one hand back up into my hair, grasping tight as I made bruises bloom across your throat.

As you writhed in my lap, I slowly became aware of a telltale slickness between your legs where you pressed up against my belly. You don’t know how hard it was in that moment not to shove you down to the carpet and take you right then, but I kept my head. If ever there was a woman who could put me in danger of losing myself, it might be you, but not as you are now. Not yet. But I will welcome that day.

I placed my living hand between your perfect little breasts and dragged it slowly down your front, over your sternum, your quivering belly, down through the soft tangle of black curls, and, changing angles with a flick of my wrist, brought one finger up to brush along the wetness gathered there. You shivered and buried your face in my shoulder at even that light sensation, choking back whatever sound tried to escape your lips. I spread the slickness of you over my fingers and gave one gentle stroke across the small bud of your clitoris. I felt you bite my neck for that, even as you pressed into my hand, seeking more. I wet my palm with you, so that the eventual slide of my hand against that erect little bundle of nerves would be welcome, and then I slid two fingers through the soft folds of your arousal, curled them up, and sunk them deep into the welcoming heat of you. Your breath caught in your throat and you froze briefly as if surprised, then shifted your hips into me, toward the pressure. You gasped as your own movement caused my fingers to brush against your inner walls. I kissed your neck and waited politely for you to settle, and then—how should I put this eloquently?—I fucked you.

The noises you made, little moans you were trying more and more unsuccessfully to repress, were gorgeous. You dug your nails desperately into my back, raking long pleasurable lines across my skin. You moved in time with me, and I met your thrusts with mine. 

And then, just there, as you neared the apex, your cries coming now in shameless peals beside my ear, I couldn’t resist gripping your hair and pulling your head back so I could savor the moment you came by my hand. As your climax gripped you, your eyes, which had been screwed shut in defiance and ecstasy, snapped furiously open in a flash of gold. I didn’t even see your hand move before it was clawed around my throat with murderous pressure. I tried to gasp, choked, and was about to hurt you very badly in retaliation when your fingers fell slack against my neck and your eyes slid closed, face falling back to my shoulder, once again absorbed in the aftershocks of your release. 

And I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Even as I coughed, crushed windpipe already mending, I laughed around the pain.

‘Oh, _Harrow,_ ’ I thought, absolutely delighted by the cruel irony of it, ‘She _knows._ ’

You glanced at me in confusion and annoyance and I got ahold of myself as quickly as I could, subsiding into chuckles as I pressed my face to your damp hair instead, breathing in the scent of bone dust and sweat, feeling a giddy sense of triumph. You weren’t hers to touch any longer. 

After your breathing returned to normal, I felt you begin to slide one hand tentatively down the curve of my hip, but I stopped you. I leaned down to your ear. “I’ll give you a chance to earn that--next time,” I said. And I made good on that promise, and often, thereafter. But that’s another story.

It was time for me to go. I kissed you one last time before depositing you, not unkindly, on the floor. I stood and dressed, fixing my hair in your mirror while you watched. I looked at the handsome bruises that were forming against my neck and let them be. It was worth it to see your expression, mentally matching your hands to the purple marks encircling my throat.

“Did I…?” you said, frowning lightly.

I took my time before I answered, re-lacing my dress at a leisurely pace before meeting your eyes in the mirror’s reflection and favoring you with a smile.

“Harry,” I drawled, lightly chiding, “Who else?”

**Author's Note:**

> Here I am with more of the content you love, and hate, and hate yourself for loving. Sweet, sweet Ianthe/Harrow angst with some Gideon angst thrown in for free.
> 
> 11/26: A friend was inspired enough by this story to create a work of fan art for it, of the instant Gideon lashes out at Ianthe. It's absolutely lovely, and if you would like to view it, it's here: https://horsesarefiction.tumblr.com/image/635870202352074752

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Exordium and Terminus](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26879941) by [propergoffic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/propergoffic/pseuds/propergoffic)




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